4 Installing Oracle Database

The Oracle Database software is available on installation media, or you can download it from the Oracle Technology Network website, or the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud portal. In most cases, you use the graphical user interface (GUI) provided by Oracle Universal Installer to install the software. However, you can also use Oracle Universal Installer to complete silent mode installations, without using the GUI.

If you must perform multiple installations of Oracle Database, you may want to use silent mode or response file mode. In response file mode, at each node, you run Oracle Universal Installer from the command line using a response file. The response file is a text file that contains the settings you typically enter in the Oracle Universal Installer GUI dialog boxes.

4.2 Reviewing Component-Specific Installation Guidelines

Review the following guidelines before starting Oracle Universal Installer:

Oracle Universal Installer

Using Oracle Universal Installer from an earlier Oracle release to install components from this release is no longer allowed.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management

In previous releases, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) was installed as part of the Oracle Database installation. With Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2), Oracle ASM is part of an Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation, either for a cluster, or for a standalone server.

To upgrade an existing Oracle ASM installation, upgrade Oracle ASM by running an Oracle Grid Infrastructure upgrade. If you do not have Oracle ASM installed and you want to use Oracle ASM as your storage option, then you must complete an Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation before you start your Oracle Database installation.

If Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC are installed on the system, Oracle Universal Installer displays the Specify Hardware Cluster Installation page. You must select the Local Installation option, unless you want to install Oracle RAC.

4.2.1 Selecting the Database Character Set

Stored SQL and PL/SQL source code, including text literals embedded in this code.

After a database is created, changing its character set is usually very expensive in terms of time and resources. Such operations may require converting all character data by exporting the whole database and importing it back. Therefore, it is important that you carefully select the database character set at installation time.

Oracle recommends Unicode AL32UTF8 as the database character set. Unicode is the universal character set that supports most of the currently spoken languages of the world. It also supports many historical scripts (alphabets). Unicode is the native encoding of many technologies, including Java, XML, XHTML, ECMAScript, and LDAP. Unicode is ideally suited for databases supporting the Internet and the global economy.

Because AL32UTF8 is a multibyte character set, database operations on character data may be slightly slower when compared to single-byte database character sets, such as WE8MSWIN1252. Storage space requirements for text in most languages that use characters outside of the ASCII repertoire are higher in AL32UTF8 compared to legacy character sets supporting the language. The increase in storage space concerns only character data and only data that is not in English. The universality and flexibility of Unicode usually outweighs these additional costs.

Consider legacy character sets when compatibility, storage requirements, or performance of text processing is critical and the database supports only a single group of languages. The database character set to be selected in this case is the character set of most clients connecting to this database.

The default character set suggested or used by Oracle Universal Installer and Database Configuration Assistant in this release is based on the language configuration of the operating system.

For most languages, the default character set is one of the Microsoft Windows character sets, for example WE8MSWIN1252, even though the database is not installed on Windows. This results from the assumption that most clients connecting to the database run under the Microsoft Windows operating system. Because the database should be able to store all characters coming from the clients and Microsoft Windows character sets have a richer character repertoire than the corresponding ISO 8859 character sets, the Microsoft Windows character sets are usually the better choice. For example, the EE8MSWIN1250 character set supports the Euro currency symbol and various smart quote characters, while the corresponding EE8ISO8859P2 character set does not support them. Oracle Database converts the data between the database character set and the client character sets, which are declared by the NLS_LANG settings.

The list of database character sets that is presented to you for selection by Oracle Universal Installer contains only the recommended character sets. Even though Oracle Database supports many more character sets, they are either deprecated or they are binary subsets of another recommended character set. For example, WE8DEC is a deprecated character set and US7ASCII and WE8ISO8859P1 are both binary subsets of WE8MSWIN1252.

If, for compatibility reasons, you must create a database in one of the character sets that was not recommended, select the Advanced database configuration option. Database Configuration Assistant in the interactive mode gives you the opportunity to select any of the database character sets supported on Linux.

4.2.2 Using an Oracle Automatic Storage Management Disk Group

This section is optional and describes how to identify disk groups and determine the free disk space that they contain. You can store either database or recovery files in an existing Oracle ASM disk group that you created during the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

Note:

The Oracle ASM instance that manages the existing disk group runs in the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home directory.

To determine if an existing Oracle ASM disk group exists or to determine if there is sufficient disk space in a disk group, use the following procedure:

View the contents of the oratab file to determine if an Oracle ASM instance is configured on the system:

# more /etc/oratab

If an Oracle ASM instance is configured on the system, then the oratab file contains a line similar to the following:

+ASM:oracle_home_path:N

In this example, +ASM is the system identifier (SID) of the Oracle ASM instance and oracle_home_path is the Oracle home directory where Oracle ASM is installed. By convention, the SID for an Oracle ASM instance should be +ASM.

Open a shell prompt and temporarily set the ORACLE_SID and ORACLE_HOME environment variables to specify the appropriate values for the Oracle ASM instance to use.

For example, if the Oracle ASM SID is named +ASM and is located in the grid subdirectory of the ORACLE_BASE directory, then enter the following commands to create the required settings:

4.3 Accessing the Installation Software

The Oracle Database software is available on installation media, or you can download it from the Oracle Technology Network website, or the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud portal. To install the software from the hard disk, you must either download it and unpack it, or copy it from the installation media, if you have it.

You can access and install Oracle Database by using one of the following methods:

4.3.1 Downloading Oracle Software

You can download the trial version of the installation files from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) or the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud portal and extract them on your hard disk. Ensure that you review and understand the terms of the license. Most downloads include the development license. This section contains the following topics:

On the download page, identify the required disk space by adding the file sizes for each required file.

The file sizes are listed next to the file names.

Select a file system with enough free space to store and expand the archive files.

In most cases, the available disk space must be at least twice the size of all of the archive files.

On the file system that you selected in Step 4, create a parent directory for each product, for example OraDB11g, to hold the installation directories.

Download all of the installation archive files to the directory that you created in Step 5.

Verify that the files you downloaded are the same size as the corresponding files on Oracle Technology Network. Also verify the checksums are the same as noted on Oracle Technology Network using a command similar to the following:

4.3.1.2 Downloading the Software from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud

You can download the software from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud as Media Packs. A Media Pack is an electronic version of the software that is also available to Oracle customers on CD-ROM or DVD. To download the Media Pack:

In the Media Pack Search page, specify the Product Pack and Platform to identify the Media Pack you want to download. If you do not know the name of the Product Pack, you can search for it using the License List.

Optionally, select the relevant product to download from the Results list.

In the search results page, click Readme to download and review the Readme file for download instructions and product information.

After you review the Readme, choose the appropriate Media Pack from the search results to download the individual zip files. Follow the Download Notes instructions in this page. After you download and extract the contents of the required zip files, proceed with the installation of the software.

Note:

Print the page with the list of downloadable files. It contains a list of part numbers and their corresponding descriptions that you may refer during the installation process.

After you download the files, click View Digest to verify that the MD5 or SHA-1 checksum matches with what is listed in the media download page.

See Also:

My Oracle Support note 549617.1 for information on how to verify the integrity of a software download at:

4.3.2 Copying the Software to the Hard Disk

Before installing Oracle Database, Oracle recommends that you copy the software to the hard disk to enable the installation process to run faster. Before copying the installation media content to the hard disk, you must mount the disk. The following sections describe how to mount the disk and copy its content to the hard disk.

4.3.2.1 Mounting Disks

On most Linux systems, the disk mounts automatically when you insert it into the disk drive. If the disk does not mount automatically, then follow these steps to mount it:

If necessary, log in as the root user and enter a command similar to one of the following to eject the currently mounted disk, then remove it from the drive:

Asianux, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

# sudo eject /mnt/dvd

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server:

# eject /media/dvd

In these examples, /mnt/dvd and /media/dvd are the mount point directories for the installation media.

Insert the appropriate installation media into the disk drive.

To verify if the disk is mounted automatically, enter one of the following commands depending on the platform:

Asianux, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

# ls /mnt/dvd

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server:

# ls /media/dvd

Before running the following command, ensure that the /mnt/dvd directory exists on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If not, create the /mnt/dvd as required, to mount the installation media.

If this command fails to display the contents of the installation media, enter a command similar to the following to mount it, depending on the platform:

Asianux, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

# mount -t iso9660 /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server:

# mount -t iso9660 /dev/dvd /media/dvd

In these examples, /mnt/dvd and /media/dvd are the mount point directories for the installation media.

4.3.2.2 Copying the Oracle Database Software to a Hard Disk

Note:

If the system does not have an installation media, you can copy the software from the disk to a file system on another system, then either mount that file system using NFS or use FTP to copy the files to the system where you want to install the software.

To copy the contents of the installation media to a hard disk:

Create a directory on the hard disk, outside of the Oracle base directory, to hold the Oracle software:

4.4 Database Security Options

During installation, you are prompted to select a database security configuration. The Secure Configuration option configures the database with database auditing options, and password policy and expiration settings.

For new database installations, the default configuration for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) includes the Secure Configuration option. To disable these enhanced security controls you can deselect the Assert all new security settings check box in the Specify Configuration Option screen that appears during the database installation. Oracle Database is then installed with default options for Oracle Database 10g Release 2. You can enable or disable auditing or password security settings, or revert to a previous security setting. After installation, you can enable or disable the security configuration by starting Database Configuration Assistant through the command-line interface.

Oracle recommends configuring your database with the Secure Configuration option either during installation or after installation using Database Configuration Assistant.

Database Vault is an enhanced security feature. If it is installed with the database, then you cannot change the secure configuration using the Database Configuration Assistant option.

4.5 Installing the Oracle Database Software

In most cases, you use the graphical user interface (GUI) provided by Oracle Universal Installer to install Oracle Database. The instructions in this section explain how to run the Oracle Universal Installer GUI to perform most database installations.

To install Oracle Database by using the silent or response file installation method, without the GUI, see Appendix A. This method is useful to perform multiple installations of Oracle Database. This appendix also describes other advanced installation topics.

4.5.1 Running Oracle Universal Installer

For any type of installation process, start Oracle Universal Installer and install the software, as follows:

Logon as the Oracle software owner user (typically, oracle) to the computer on which you want to install Oracle components.

If you are installing the software from installation media, mount the disk if it is not mounted.

If the disk does not mount automatically, see the "Mounting Disks" section for platform-specific information.

Some platforms automatically mount the disk when you insert the installation media into the drive.

To start Oracle Universal Installer, complete one of the following steps depending on the location of the installation files:

Note:

Start Oracle Universal Installer from the terminal session where you logged in as the oracle user and set the user's environment.

If the installation files are on installation media, enter commands similar to the following, where directory_path is the path of the database directory on the installation media:

$ /directory_path/runInstaller

If the installation files are on the hard disk, change the directory to the database directory and enter the following command:

$ ./runInstaller

Downloading Updates Before Installation

Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2), if you plan to run the installation in a secured data center, then you can download updates before starting the installation by starting Oracle Universal Installer on a system that has Internet access in update download mode. To start Oracle Universal Installer to download the updates, enter the following command:

$ ./runInstaller -downloadUpdates

Provide the My Oracle Support user name and password, and provide proxy settings, if needed, in the Provide My Oracle Support credentials screen. Then, enter the Download location and click Download in the Download software updates screen. If updates are available, then they are downloaded in the location provided. The Finish Updates screen shows the successful download of the updates. Click Close.

After you download the updates, transfer the update file to a directory on the server where you plan to run the installation.

Do not modify the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) except by using a patch provided by Oracle Support Services. Oracle Universal Installer automatically installs the Oracle-supplied version of the JRE. This version is required to run Oracle Universal Installer and several Oracle assistants.

If errors are displayed while installing the software, see Appendix G for information about troubleshooting.

If you chose an installation type that runs Oracle Database Configuration Assistant in interactive mode, then you must provide detailed information about configuring the database and network.

If you need help when using the Oracle Database Configuration Assistant in interactive mode, click Help on any screen.

Note:

If you chose a default installation, Oracle Database Configuration Assistant does not run interactively.

When the configuration assistant tasks are complete click finish, click Exit, then click Yes to exit from Oracle Universal Installer.

During the database installation, when Oracle Universal Installer prompts you to run a script with root privileges, enter a command similar to the following in a terminal where you are logged in as the root user, then click OK:

# /script_path/script_name

For more information see screen "Install product" in the installation table that follows.

See Chapter 5 for information about tasks that you must complete after you install Oracle Database.

The following table lists the various screens displayed during an Enterprise Edition installation for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2):

Enter your My Oracle Support password in the My Oracle Support Password field.

Click Next.

Download Software Updates

Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2), you can use the Software Updates feature to dynamically download and apply the latest updates. Select one of the following options, and click Next:

Use My Oracle Support credentials for download: Select this option to download and apply the latest software updates.

Click Proxy Settings to configure a proxy for Oracle Universal Installer to use to connect to the Internet. Provide the proxy server information for your site and a user account that has access to the local area network through which the server is connecting. Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) you can enter the Proxy Realm information. The proxy realm information is case-sensitive. If you do not have a proxy realm, then you do not have to provide an entry for the Proxy Username, Proxy Password, and Proxy Realm fields.

Click Test Connection to ensure that your proxy settings are correctly entered, and the installer can download the updates.

Use pre-downloaded software updates: Select this option to apply the software updates previously downloaded using the -downloadUpdates flag.

Specify the path to the location where you have already downloaded the software updates.

Skip software updates: Select this option if you do not want to apply any updates.

This screen is displayed if you select to download the software updates, or provide the pre-downloaded software updates location.

If you selected Use My Oracle Support credentials for download in the previous screen, select Download and apply all updates, and then click Next to apply the updates.

By default, the download location for software updates is placed in the home directory of the Oracle installation owner you are using to run this installation. If you choose to download the software updates in another location, then click Browse and select a different location on your server.

If you selected Use pre-downloaded software updates in the previous screen, select Apply all updates, and then click Next to apply the updates downloaded before starting the installation.

Select Installation Option

Select one of the following installation options, and click Next:

Create and configure a database: This option creates a new database with sample schemas.

Install database software only: This option only installs the database binaries. To configure the database, you must run Oracle Database Configuration Assistant after the software installation.

Upgrade an existing database: This option installs the software binaries in a new Oracle home. After the installation, you can upgrade the existing database.

System Class

Select the type of system for installing the database, and click Next.

Desktop Class: Select this option if you are installing on a laptop or desktop class system. This option includes a starter database and enables a minimal configuration. This option is designed for those who want to get the database running quickly.

Server Class: Select this option if you are installing on a server class system, such as what you would use when deploying Oracle Database in a production data center. This option provides more advanced configuration options. Advanced configuration options available using this option include Oracle RAC, Oracle ASM, backup and recovery configuration, integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, and more fine-grained memory tuning, among many others.

Grid Installation Options

Select the type of database installation you want to perform, and click Next.

Single instance database installation: This option installs the database and the listener.

Typical Install: This installation method is selected by default. It lets you quickly install Oracle Database using minimal input. It installs the software and optionally creates a general-purpose database using the information that you specify on this screen.

Advanced Install: This installation method enables you to perform more complex installations, such as creating individual passwords for different accounts, creating specific types of starter databases (for example, for transaction processing or data warehouse systems), using different language groups, specifying email notifications, and so on.

Select Product Languages

This option enables you to select the language in which you want to run the product.

Select the product language from the Available Languages list, and move it to the Selected Languages list. Click Next.

If you click Select Options, then based on your selection you can enable or disable components from the components list. This screen enables you to customize the database. The components available in this screen are:

Oracle Partitioning

Oracle OLAP

Oracle Label Security

Oracle Data Mining RDBMS Files

Oracle Database Vault option

Oracle Real Application Testing

Click OK to continue.

Note: The Select Options button is enabled only if you select the Enterprise Edition installation type.

Specify Installation Location

The Oracle base path appears by default. You can change this path based on your requirement. Specify Oracle Base, Software Location, and click Next.

The Oracle base directory is a top-level directory for Oracle software installations owned by an Oracle installation owner account. The default Oracle base path is mountpoint/app/user, where user is the user account running the installation. You can change the path based on your requirements.

In the Software Location field, accept the default value or enter the Oracle home directory path in which you want to install Oracle software.The directory path must not contain spaces. Click Next.

Note: This screen is available only with Advanced Installation.

Ensure that the Oracle home path for the database home and the Oracle base path use only ASCII characters. At the time of this release, the use of non-ASCII characters for an Oracle database home or Oracle base is not supported.

You are prompted by the installer to specify the Inventory Directory path for the central inventory the first time you install any Oracle software on your computer.

Select the oraInventory Group Name of the operating system group that will own the Oracle Inventory directory (the Oracle Inventory group).

Click Next.

Note: By default, the Oracle Inventory directory is not installed under the Oracle Base directory. This is because all Oracle software installations share a common Oracle Inventory, so there is only one Oracle Inventory for all users, whereas there is a separate Oracle Base directory for each user.

Select Configuration Type

Select one of the following, and click Next:

General Purpose / Transaction Processing: This is a starter database designed for general usage or transaction-heavy applications.

See the online help provided by either Oracle Universal Installer or Oracle Database Configuration Assistant for a description of these preconfigured database types.

Specify Database Identifiers

Provide the following information, and click Next:

Database Naming

Provide the Global Database Name using the following syntax:

db_unique_name.db_domain

db_unique_name is the name of the database. It can contain a maximum of 30 characters if the first 8 characters are unique and begin with an alphabetic character. The characters can include alphanumeric, underscore (_), dollar sign ($), and pound sign (#), no other special characters are permitted in a database name.

db_domain is the computer environment used for the database. It can contain no more than 128 characters (alphanumeric, underscore (_), and pound sign (#)), inclusive of all periods.

Note: Ensure that the combination of database name (first 8 unique characters of the unique name for the database), delimiter, and the database domain name does not exceed 128 characters.

For example:

sales.us.example.com

db_unique_name is sales

db_domain is us.example.com

When you enter the Global Database Name, Oracle Universal Installer automatically populates the SID prefix with the database name. You can change this name in Advanced Installation. Oracle Universal Installer limits the SID to 12 alphanumeric characters and the SID cannot contain an underscore (_), dollar sign ( $), or pound sign (#).

This screen is displayed only if you select Oracle Automatic Storage Management as your storage option in the Specify Storage Option screen.

Disk groups are created during the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation. Disk groups are configured with the SYSASM privilege using asmcmd or SQL create diskgroup commands. An ASM disk group consists of multiple disk partitions.

The table in this screen displays existing disk groups created during the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation. Select the disk group to use for database file storage.

Specify Schema Passwords

Enter and confirm passwords for the privileged database accounts, and click Next.

Note: Optionally, you can use the same password for all accounts. However, Oracle recommends that you specify a different password for each account. You must remember the passwords that you specify.

This option verifies that the minimum system requirements to perform the database installation are met.

If you click Check Again, then you can run the prerequisite check again to see if the minimum requirements are met to carry on with the database installation.

Click Fix & Check Again, if you want the installer to fix the problem and verify the system requirements again.

Note: The Fix & Check Again option generates a script that you must run as the root user. This generated script sets some system parameters to Oracle-recommended values. Oracle recommends that you do not modify the contents of this script.

To get a list of failed requirements, select ShowFailed from the list. To get a list of all the prerequirement checks run by the OUI, select Show All. To get a list of the prerequirement checks that are successful, select Show Succeeded.

Note: Oracle recommends that you use caution when selecting the Ignore All option. If you select this option, then Oracle Universal Installer may not confirm that your system can install Oracle Database successfully.

Note: Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2), you can save all the installation steps into a response file by clicking Save Response File. Later, this file can be used for a silent installation.

Install Product

This screen displays the progress of a database installation.

This screen then displays the status information for the configuration assistants that configure the software and create a database.

A message is displayed at the end of the Database Configuration Assistant process. Click OK.

During the installation process, the Execute Configuration Scripts window appears. Run the root.sh and, if required, the orainstRoot.sh configuration scripts as the root user to complete the installation. Click OK.

Note: If this is the first time you are installing Oracle software on your system, then Oracle Universal Installer prompts you to run the orainstRoot.sh script.

This screen is shown automatically when all the configuration tools are successful.

Review the Enterprise Manager Database Control URL information displayed in this screen and click Close.

Caution:

After installation is complete, do not manually remove or run cron jobs that remove /tmp/.oracle or /var/tmp/.oracle directories or their files while Oracle software is running. If you remove these files, then the Oracle software can intermittently stop responding. Oracle Restart installations fail with the following error:

CRS-0184: Cannot communicate with the CRS daemon.

4.6 Installing Oracle Database Examples

If you plan to use the following products or features, then download and install the products from the Oracle Database Examples media: